'Horrible', 'Chaos': Former Oracle Employees Describe Recent Layoffs

After layoffs at Oracle, Business Insider spoke to current and former employees, learning that some marketing teams reportedly saw their headcount "slashed by anywhere from 30% to 50%." One former marketing employee complained that "It's just a horrible environment left. It's complete chaos....""The common verb to describe Oracle's Advertising and Customer Experience team is that they were obliterated," said a person who works at Oracle. Insider was unable to determine exactly how many ACX employees were cut, but one person familiar said it may have reached 80% of the division... "There's no marketing anymore," a senior marketing leader who was laid off on Monday told Insider. "We're not even supposed to say we're in marketing because there is no marketing division...." One recently laid off marketing leader told Insider that their team was cut in half, and no successor has been appointed to take their place. "My team is texting me; they still have no idea who they work for," the person said. "No one told them I was gone, so they're just floating in the wind...." While the company is known for cutting workers every year, some employees said they were shocked by how many senior, experienced, and high-performing staffers were let go on Monday. For example, Oracle's code base is so complicated that it can take years before engineers are fully up to speed with how everything works, and workers with over a decade of experience were cut, some employees said. Other employees who were laid off in recent months have said they're furious they were cut before their restricted stock units were scheduled to vest, costing them tens of thousands of dollars in expected compensation. "It's just deplorable," said a recently-laid off marketing leader whose primary compensation package included stock. "I know there were people on medical leave laid off. I know people on parental leave that were laid off." The article points out that in June Oracle also reported $191 million on restructuring costs for the previous fiscal year - and another $431 million for the year before. ("Oracle did not respond to requests for comment from Insider at the time of publication.") A recently laid-off marketing employee told the site that "We've been kind of working like zombies the last couple of weeks because there's just this sense of 'What am I doing here?" Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader SpzToid for sharing the article.

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